The fauna, flora and landscapes of the Dean in pictures

Wild Boar

This is the mother of the tiny piglet that I uploaded a photo of on the 5th April. She is wary of people, and protective of her young.

As expected, those boar that were encouraged to interact with humans last year have mostly met an early death, but some remain. Thankfully I’m seeing less of this sort of thing this year so far, but still photos emerge – just because it’s possible to get close enough to touch certain young boar doesn’t mean you should.

There was one particular group of piglets last year who were tamed by people feeding them and their mother. This resulted in an easy kill for poachers, leaving the piglets to fend for themselves, with the tame traits of their deceased mother. Their tameness was exploited by many people, some of whom should have known better, in the quest for photos or simply to see them. To be fair, many of them will have done so without appreciating what the consequences can be. A year on, only one of those piglets survives. In a pathetic display of habituation, it now wanders up to parked cars hoping to be fed, just a couple of hundred yards from the corpse of its most recently killed sibling. People are continuing to feed it to this day, whilst they take snaps on their phones. I’ve had to chase that boar off in to the woods a number of times to get it away from traffic and people, but it’s virtually impossible to make it fearful of me or anyone else, and it surely won’t be long until something happens to it. Although the problem doesn’t seem quite so bad this year, I believe certain piglets this year might be facing a similar prospect.

It’s great to see our wildlife, and especially so at close quarters, but there are limits. Please do not attempt to feed the Wild Boar, and please watch and take photographs responsibly and respectfully.